With Black Friday arriving earlier than ever this year, the push to get books into stores by the traditional day now seems like an anachronism. Nevertheless,  two titles from brand name authors (one of them the biggest of brand names) arrive and there’s several others to keep an eye on.

All the titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed, with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of 11/24/14

To get you in the mood for next week, below is Lewis Black’s rant on his non-namesake day:

Holds Leaders

  

Hope to Die, James Patterson, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print;  eBook), OverDrive Sample

One of the holds leaders for the entire season,  close behind John Grisham’s Grey Mountain, John Sandford’s Deadline, and Lee Child’s Personal, this is the next in the series featuring  Alex Cross (played by Tyler Perry in the 2012 movie, Alex Cross), following up on the cliff-hanger from last year’s Cross My Heart.

Betrayed: A Rosato & DiNunzio Novel, Lisa Scottoline, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio), OverDrive Sample

After several standalones, Scottoline returned to her Rosato & DiNunzio series last year, in Accused, bringing in new partners to the all-female law firm, now called Rosato & Associates. Expressing some reservations about the novel’s plot points, Kirkus wound up judging this, “the most successful melding to date of Rosato & DiNunzio’s cases and Scottoline’s family-centered stand-alones.”

LibraryReads Pick

Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover: The Fourth Rule of Scoundrels, Sarah MacLean, (HarperCollins/Avon),  OverDrive Sample

November pick — “Having lost her innocence in a teenage love affair, Lady Georgiana is a social pariah. Trying to save the tatters of her reputation, she must marry and marry well. By night, she is Anna, the most powerful madame in London, and a powerful seductress in her own right. Will Georgiana succeed in re-entering society, or will her past catch up with her once and for all?” — Emily Peros, Denver Public Library, Denver, CO

Best Book Pick 

Twice Tempted, Eileen Dreyer,  (Hachette/Grand Central mass mkt pbk and eBook), OverDrive Sample

Picked, along with the previous title,  as one of the ten best books in the romance genre by Library Journal‘s romance reviewer.

Eye On 

The Look of Love, Sarah Jio, (Penguin/Plume, original trade pbk; Blackstone Audio), OverDrive Sample

With this striking cover and the author’s growing reputation for light-hearted trade paperback romances (aka, “chick lit” titles), we predict Sarah Jio will soon break in to hardcover (in fact, she has switched publishers, which signals a relaunch). Her previous title, Good Night June, won over many by incorporating the story of the origins of the children’s book Good Night, Moon. via a woman who inherits a bookstore and discovers her aunt knew Margaret Wise Brown, which brought comparisons to Nora Ephron’s movie, You’ve Got Mail. The New York Daily News gives it a great send off, calling it, “a fun, quirky exploration of romance and friendship.”

Media Coverage 

After We Collided, Anna Todd, (S&S/Gallery, S&S Audio), OverDrive Sample

The second in the series that began with After, this grew out of fan fiction dedicated to the boy band One Direction, and captured media attention for the claimed one billion downloads. Published online by WattPad, the New York Times wrote about it in March, Cosmopolitan magazine picked it for their first-ever #CosmoBookClub, and interviewed the author Anna Todd  in the magazine. the series was signed for a movie and caused even NPR’s Morning Edition to wonder earlier this month, “After Fifty Shades, Could This Be The Next Big Online Hit?”

The transition to print did not follow the Fifty Shades path to bestsellerdom, however. After made a single appearance at #107 on the USA Today best seller list. The site Jezebel, took a dim view of it back in April, declaring, “If you complained about the prose of 50 Shades, After is going to send you into a conniptions.”

Holds are minimal on light ordering in libraries.

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys: A Memoir, Viv Albertine,  (Macmillan/St. Martin’s) OverDrive Sample

Punk rockers are now middle aged, so it’s memoir time. This one is by the guitarist for the all-girl band, The Slits (thanks for the correction in the comments). It gets an approving, if somewhat backhanded, review from the New York Times;” [Albertine’s] book has an honest, lo-fi grace. If it were better written, it would be worse. To borrow a line from David Byrne, which Ms. Albertine quotes, ‘The better a singer’s voice, the harder it is to believe what they’re saying.’ ‘

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2014 at 4:00 pm and is filed under 2014 -- Fall, New Title Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.